Law
History of Human Rights
The history of human rights traces the evolution of principles and laws that protect the inherent dignity and worth of every individual. It encompasses key milestones such as the Magna Carta, the Universal Declaration of Human Rights, and various international treaties and conventions. The history of human rights reflects the ongoing struggle to secure and uphold fundamental freedoms and protections for all people.
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11 Key excerpts on "History of Human Rights"
eBook - PDF- Ilias Bantekas, Lutz Oette(Authors)
- 2020(Publication Date)
- Cambridge University Press(Publisher)
6 Foundations, Achievements and Challenges 1.2 THE DEVELOPMENT OF HUMAN RIGHTS AND INTERNATIONAL HUMAN RIGHTS LAW The founding document of international human rights law, i.e. the Universal Declaration of Human Rights (UDHR), refers in its preamble and article 1 to claims and freedoms that human beings enjoy by virtue of their humanity: that is, inherent rights. These rights are based on the principles of dignity, equality and liberty, and are underpinned by notions of solidarity. While the notion of human rights is arguably of more recent origin, it is part of a broader development that can be traced back to the earlier stages of human history. At the core of human rights lie fundamental questions about the nature of human beings and their relationship with each other as members of societies, including ‘international society’. In this context human rights address the relationship of individuals to others, in particular to those in a position of power (especially civil and political rights, equality and non-discrimination) and the relationships of groups and their members to others (minority rights, right to self-determination and rights of indigenous peoples); the settlement of disputes and administration of justice (fair trial in modern parlance); rights to participate in the polis (particularly freedom of expression and related rights, including the right to vote); and the material (in the broadest sense) conditions for a life of dignity and freedom (social, economic and cultural rights; the right to development). This section traces the historical development of human rights and its most prominent manifestation, international human rights law. It examines the antecedents and formation of human rights with a view both to locating them in a broader socio-political history and to identifying their specific nature.
eBook - PDF- Ilias Bantekas, Lutz Oette(Authors)
- 2016(Publication Date)
- Cambridge University Press(Publisher)
This undertaking is important at a time when the validity of human rights, though seemingly triumphant, is being called into question on account of their association with particular historical and political developments and ideas that are associated with Western secular liberal democracies. Reflecting on shared concerns throughout history and identifying strands of thought and practices that have contributed to their development can, in this context, open up perspectives that provide human rights with broad-based legitimacy. 1.2.1 Foundations International human rights law is a rather late addition to the body of international law whose modern origins are commonly located in the seven- teenth and eighteenth centuries. 1 International law governed the relationship 1 See for a thorough account, W. G. Grewe, The Epochs of International Law (Walter de Gruyter, 2000), and for a concise summary, S. C. Neiff, ‘A Short History of International Law’, in M. D. Evans (ed.), International Law, 4th edn (Oxford University Press, 2014), 3–28. 6 Foundations, achievements and challenges between states, which were recognised as its sole subjects. States were con- sidered sovereign, which meant that the treatment of citizens and other individuals on their territories fell within their exclusive prerogative. While certain human rights concerns, such as religious persecution, were at times raised, individual or collective rights as understood today did not form part of the corpus of international law. This explains why international human rights law, when emerging with considerable force following World War II, drew heavily on ethical imperatives, concepts of rights and historical sources, as well as national declarations and constitutions. This was evident in the preparatory work to the UDHR, which was informed by the views of a number of philosophers and intellectuals about the nature and content of human rights and borrowed substantially from national rights declarations.
eBook - PDF- Susana Sampaio-Dias(Author)
- 2016(Publication Date)
· 1 · A BRIEF HISTORY AND DEFINITION OF HUMAN RIGHTS This chapter first considers a possible definition of human rights based on its philosophical formulation and multidisciplinary contemporary approaches. Divided into four sections, the chapter first introduces the historical origins of the three generations of human rights, then moves on to a brief explanation of its legislative evolution and current jurisdictions in the second section. The third section goes beyond the legal framework of human rights and introduces the contemporary contributions of sociology and political science, narrowing down their reflective critique about the social role of the media. The final sec- tion specifically addresses media studies and how these introduced the prom- ise of a global public sphere in which ideas about human rights circulate today. Origins of human rights The words of Eleanor Roosevelt (1948) upon the adoption of the Univer- sal Declaration of Human Rights (UDHR) conveyed great optimism for a devastated society coming out of World War II (Haas, 2008). Her speech proclaimed a comprehensive and indivisible conception of human rights by announcing a path of hope that would help to overcome the horrors of the preceding years. But her words did not anticipate the troubled times that 2 reporting human rights would follow—years of tensions and political fragilities created by the Cold War. Above all, the United Nations (UN) wanted to create a document that would inspire an apparatus of international order and justice, preserving inter- state peace and preventing genocide, a document that would be backed by a complex of international organizations. This mechanism would monitor the behaviour of nations, provide a platform for diplomatic resolution of conflicts, and, if necessary, make use of military force to uphold its values (Nickel, 1987; Fagan, 2009; Ishay, 2010).
eBook - PDFHuman Rights Brought Home
Socio-Legal Perspectives of Human Rights in the National Context
- Simon Halliday, Patrick Schmidt, Simon Halliday, Patrick Schmidt(Authors)
- 2004(Publication Date)
- Hart Publishing(Publisher)
Not least of them is the problem of origins and definition: where do these rights come from and how are they defined? As rights, human rights may seem univer-sal in character but they are also subjected to interpretation and adaptation in national contexts. In single domestic contexts observers may be comfort-able with limiting assumptions made about the scope of human rights — such as whether they include economic and social rights in addition to civil and political rights — but taken internationally there are serious challenges made to the authority of human rights as norms for governance. In an important move, the authors recognise the dependence of the international on the national context. Thus, they map out the course of human rights from international treaties to constitutionalism and, ultimately, consider the significance of administrative processes to the protection of human rights. This tour emphasises the wide scope and breadth of the problem fac-ing human rights implementation, for we are reminded that human rights must pass from a contested international order through layers of gover-nance and layers of norms. Yet, while reminding us of the idiosyncratic nature of human rights, Galligan and Sandler frame the chapters to follow by directing us to seek out the patterns and variables affecting the regula-tory effectiveness of human rights norms. The remaining chapters present new empirical data to explore the subject of human rights in the domestic context. The first of these chapters examines the historical development of human rights law. Mikael Rask Madsen offers a richly textured account of the emergence of the field of human rights in the second half of the twentieth century.
eBook - PDF- Pamela Slotte, Miia Halme-Tuomisaari(Authors)
- 2015(Publication Date)
- Cambridge University Press(Publisher)
Bielefeldt, ‘Philosophical and Historical Foundations of Human Rights’, pp. 3–18. A similar line of argument is found in Jack Donnelly, ‘Human Rights and Human Dignity: an Analytic Critique of Non-Western Human Rights Conceptions’, American Political Science Review, 76 (1982), 313–14. We have in our research identified how such learning processes are accompanied by rigid and predetermined positions allotted for ‘experts’ and ‘students’, and how these positions end up reproducing familiar and problematic social structures of privileged and underprivileged that continually echo the boarders of ‘West and the rest’; see Halme-Tuomisaari, Human Rights in Action. revisiting the origins of human rights 9 pack centuries of civilizations into a neat couple of pages. 16 At other times they become extensive queries that fill entire volumes as is exemplified by Paul Lauren’s influential, eloquently written and extensively researched book The Evolution of International Human Rights: Visions Seen. 17 Importantly Lauren’s book, like other works embodying a similar approach, intends not to question, but to affirm the basic tenets of the hagiographic narrative. This goal alters the role assigned to historical events and research: instead of forming the foundations for factual or objective description – arguably still central scholarly motivations even if impossible to realize – historical data is transformed into an instrument that is utilized to defend a predetermined position, namely, to prove with the help of cross-cultural historical data that human rights are universal notions. 18 Yet such accounts struggle to persuade for reasons applying to the text- book narrative more generally. They forward wishful conclusions of how isolated and esoteric historical events impacted the evolution of the con- temporary human rights understanding and phenomenon.
- Crystal Parikh(Author)
- 2019(Publication Date)
- Cambridge University Press(Publisher)
For example, following World War II, the shock and horror at the revelations of the Nazi genocide against the Jews resulting from the Nuremberg prosecutions of Nazi perpetrators led to the collective “outrage” and crisis of conscience referred to in the Preamble of the UDHR. 4 In Lauren’s detailed and comprehensive narrative, the strongest evidence for the extended historical evolution of human rights, even “long before anyone had ever heard of the more recent expression, ‘human rights’,” finally lies in the initiative of myriads of people over the centuries, some known worldwide but most anonymous, who were willing to take enormous risks and make significant personal sacrifices to achieve progress toward human equality against pervasive and powerful social and political forces and economic interests. By implication, to restrict human rights his- tory to a particular set of modern developments that refer specifically to “human rights” would be to ignore and fail to learn from these repeated instances of individual and collective sacrifices and struggles toward a more just world where human dignity, equality, and freedom would be universally protected. 5 The receptions of two recent historical studies that situate the History of Human Rights in a much more specific historical genealogy or particular convergence of events illustrate how the new project of human rights history has come to delineate the problem as much as the possibility of locating clear historical trajectories for human rights. In Inventing Human Rights, Lynn Hunt locates the matrix of modern human rights in the eight- eenth century, through the conjoined cultural effects of the articulation of the universal rights of man and citizen in the founding declarations of the American and French revolutions; the delegitimization of torture and forms of extreme public punishment inflicted on the prisoner’s body;
- Onuma Yasuaki(Author)
- 2017(Publication Date)
- Cambridge University Press(Publisher)
360 representing some 90 percent of humanity – the very subjects of human rights – should not be overlooked. 2 I History of Human Rights 1 Prominence and Historicity of the Idea of Human Rights The concept of “human rights” occupies a crucial position in the twenty- first century world. It is a sacred term of our time, often trumping other competing values. Labelling an opponent a “human rights violator” is an extremely effective means of attack. No government would dare say they do not respect human rights. The concept of human rights seems to embody the spirit of the time. Almost all references on human rights share these understandings on the contemporary status of human rights (see, for example, Henkin 1990: ix; Alston & Goodman 2012: v). Yet when viewed from non-Western societies, the picture is slightly different. While the number of people seeking more freedom and funda- mental rights has been growing rapidly, not a few people still regard human rights as somewhat alien. 3 In nations where memories of past interventions by Western powers under such slogans as “humanity” or “civilization” remain, “human rights” sometimes sound like another beautiful slogan by which Western powers rationalize their intervention- ist policies. Regarding aggressive human rights policies by Western governments, advocacy by NGOs and one-sided coverage of human rights cases by influential media related to non-Western cultures, religions and practices as self-righteous and hypocritical persists. This perception is held not only by authoritarian governments but also by ordinary citizens in non-Western societies. 4 2 Due to space limitations, I can deal with only an extremely limited number of problems regarding human rights. Although such problems as the right to life, right to health, torture, disappearance, rights of refugees and the physically or mentally handicapped are some of the critically important ones, they are not addressed here.
eBook - PDF- Leanne Weber, Elaine Fishwick, Marinella Marmo(Authors)
- 2017(Publication Date)
- Red Globe Press(Publisher)
Far from bypassing state sovereignty according to Arendt’s vision, this framework operates within a system of independent sovereign nations, creating an ongo-ing tension between individual and group rights and the rights of states. Chapter 2 provides a basic overview of the current system of international human rights law. Additional readings and materials Universal Declaration of Human Rights Available at: http://www1.umn.edu/humanrts/instree/b1udhr.htm. The Origins and Idea of Human Rights 17 Constitution of the United States of America Available at: http://www.archives.gov/exhibits/charters/constitution.html International Covenant on Economic, Social and Cultural Rights Available at: http://www1.umn.edu/humanrts/instree/b2esc.htm. International Covenant on Civil and Political Rights Available at: http://www1.umn.edu/humanrts/instree/b3ccpr.htm. Cushman, T. (2012) Handbook of Human Rights , Abingdon: Routledge. Dembour, M. (2006), Who Believes in Human Rights? Reflections on the European Convention , Cambridge, Cambridge University Press. Donnelly, J. (2002) Universal Rights in Theory and Practice , Ithaca, NY: Cornell University Press. Douzinas, C. (2000) The End of Human Rights: Critical Legal Thought at the Turn of the Century , Oxford: Hart Publishing. Kalin, W. (2013) ‘ Late modernity: human rights under pressure? ’ Punishment and Society 15(4): 397—411. Locke, J., The Second Treatise of Government (first published 1689). Available as a free download from Project Gutenberg at http://www.gutenberg.org/ebooks/ 7370. Neier, A. (2012) The International Human Rights Movement: A History , Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press. Nickel, J.W. (1987) Making Sense of Human Rights: Philosophical Reflections on the Universal Declaration of Human Rights , Berkeley, CA: University of California Press. Osiatynski, W. (2009) Human Rights and Their Limits , Cambridge: Cambridge University Press. Court case cited Muir v The Queen [2004] HCA 21 (Australia).
- Shiv R.S. Bedi(Author)
- 2007(Publication Date)
- Hart Publishing(Publisher)
That ‘ added dimension’, according to Martin Dixon, is the dignity of Mankind. Dixon is of the opinion that: ‘Although the binding force of human rights obligations must rest ultimately in treaty or cus-tom, the inspiration for these obligations lies in the “morality”, “justice”, “ethics” or a simple regard for the dignity of Mankind.’ 131 This statement actually implies a lot. No matter how positivistic or formalistic a judge is, if the inspiration of the con-cept of human dignity as substantive law is indeed in the fields of morality, justice and ethics, any interpretation of a customary or treaty law related to human rights cannot escape in the process of judicial interpretation and application of that law delving into the trinity of the moral-justice-ethics depths of human dignity. And since all branches of international law have a growing human rights aspect, inter-national law cannot escape being coloured by the concept of human dignity. In other words in the long term development of human rights law international law appears more human-dignity oriented than state-sovereignty oriented. The preamble of the United Nations Charter, a document containing 111 Articles and 19 chapters, opens with the words: ‘We the Peoples of the United Nations determined . . . to reaffirm faith in fundamental human rights, in the dig-nity and worth of the human person, in the equal rights of men and women.’ In order to materialize the place of human dignity in the post-war development of international law, and within that framework of the international human rights law, the drafters of the Charter foresaw the development of an International Bill of Rights. This Bill now consists of three monumental documents: 1) the Universal Declaration of Human Rights (1948), 2) the International Covenant on Civil and Political Rights (1966), and 3) the International Covenant on Economic, Social and Cultural Rights (1966).
eBook - PDF- Dirk Ehlers, Ulrich Becker, Et al., Dirk Ehlers(Authors)
- 2011(Publication Date)
- De Gruyter(Publisher)
The following overview on the history and development of human rights and funda-mental freedoms first deals with the protection of fundamental rights within the context of the Council of Europe, notably by the European Convention on Human Rights, and then describes and analyses the development of human rights protection in the EU con-text. It concludes with an analysis of the development of the fundamental freedoms in European Community law, which originally were primarily conceived as instruments against discrimination on the basis of nationality, but over time have gradually developed towards economic freedoms. II. History and Development of Human Rights Protection in the Context of the Council of Europe and the European Convention on Human Rights The Council of Europe sees its primary responsibility in the elaboration of legally binding treaty instruments for the protection of human rights. Among the more than 170 treaties which have been compiled within the Council of Europe 8 , a great number deals with the protection of human rights. The most important of these treaties certainly is the Euro-Christian Walter § 1 II 4 Wording in the declaration of The German Bundestag 50 Jahre Europarat: 50 Jahre europäischer Menschenrechtsschutz BT-Drs 14/1568 of 9 September 1999, p 2. 5 In the Final Act of Helsinki (http://www.osce.org/about/15661.html) of 1975, the respect of human rights was anchored as an independent policy (principle VII) and basket III contained amongst others agreements concerning human contacts, see on this issue Hailbronner in: Graf Vitzthum (ed) Völkerrecht (3 rd ed, Berlin 2004) sec 3, para 258. 6 The renaming to “Organisation for Security and Co-operation in Europe” took place after the political changes in Middle and Eastern Europe ( cf summit declaration of Helsinki “The Challenges of Change”, http://www.osce.org/documents/mcs/1992/07/4046_en.pdf; Bulletin of the Federal Government of Germany Nr 82 of 23 July 1992, 777, 781).
eBook - PDF- Roger Trigg(Author)
- 2008(Publication Date)
- Wiley-Blackwell(Publisher)
3 Human rights The Political Context Views about natural law have become closely connected with talk of ‘natural rights’, which was given great impetus by the English philosopher of the seventeenth century, John Locke. He in turn is often credited with having provided the philosophical basis for the American Declaration of Independ-ence. Such talk gets its cogency from the implication that ‘rights’ are deeply ingrained in the nature of things. Above all, of course, they are then linked to our own nature as human beings. Yet this is not just of historical interest, since appeals to rights form a large part of contemporary moral language. ‘Human rights’ are the currency of much contemporary moral discourse, and form a potent weapon in international relations. People get particularly indignant when they feel their rights have not been met. Moral campaigns are often couched in the language of human rights. At a time when natural law itself is often neglected, this may seem curious. Yet in politics the language of rights, both within nations and in relations between them, has its effect. It can empower victims, and give them an opportunity to appeal to standards beyond their own social context. What precisely is being appealed to? What are human rights, and how can they be enforced? What are they grounded in (if anything) and how can we tell the difference between a legitimate and a spurious right? ‘Rights’ are often appealed to in a vague way. Increasingly the laws of various countries are required to take notice of human rights, and there is a major question of interpretation. Often the rights are underspecified. The United States has always allowed judges to veto legislation on the ground that it trans-gresses basic constitutional rights. In the United Kingdom the doctrine was always that Parliament was sovereign, but in recent years judicial review of legislation has become increasingly common.
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